Composed music for octet, three singers, and chromatic santur set to the text of two poems by Ahmad Shamlou, one of the most outstanding Iranian poets in the field of contemporary Persian poetry.

With his background in Iranian traditional music, jazz and Western modernism, Mirsaeed Hosseiny Panah is a composer and santur player who searches for syntheses between Eastern and Western cultural expressions.

Ahmad Shamlou himself represents such a synthesis in that he mixes Iranian tradition with Western-inspired modernism. Hosseiny Panah's music eloquently captures the complexity and often dark uncertainty that characterises this secular poet's work. He weaves instrumental textural patterns with tonal material from traditional scales around the beautiful, almost expressionistic song lines, and his eminent santur playing slips in and out of the orchestral textures creating a distinctive atmosphere.

Mirsaeed Hosseiny Panah shows with this CD release that he is a composer who has dared to move on from his cultural background without abandoning it, doing so with the clear intention of establishing a new and more comprehensive musical identity.